Bitcoin is the most famous cryptocurrency but there are others worth of your attention. These are the most famous ones:
Ethereum - ETH
Ethereum is today the second cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization. It is really a crypto that is designed to be a platform through which other cryptos can be issued and distributed, thanks to SmartContracts technology or intelligent contract management safely.
Ethereum is also a project that not only covers the field of crypto currencies, but also proposes solutions to create transparent voting systems or decentralized process management.
Ethereum features:
Type of crypto: Decentralized
Is there a maximum number of Ether? No, it grows by 18 million every year.
Transaction time in Ethereum: 5 minutes
What are the main risks of investing in Ethereum?
It has a value that has been gaining not only capitalization rate but also a lot of weight in terms of distribution of capitalization among the crypto currencies. The fact that it is a working environment to create new crypto currencies and with an exchange commission lower than Bitcoin, makes it have a security bonus in terms of investment.
Where can I buy Ethereums?
Ethereum is available for direct purchase in Coinbase, Blockchain and Bitpanda among others. You can exchange your Bitcoins for Ethereum in Exchanges like Binance, Changelly, Shapeshift among others.
Ethereum’s official website: https://www.ethereum.org/
Ripple - XRP
Ripple aims to simplify and optimize the already complex banking system with which we have been living so far. Ripple focuses its efforts on connecting all payment systems in a single ledger, providing banks with a secure, fast and scalable block chain system.
You have to know that Ripple is a centralized and proprietary currency, that is, it is not released at the development level and is intended exclusively to support large banking companies.
The speed of XRP transactions is one of the main features, as they allow transfers to be made in very few seconds, compared to more than two minutes of ETH and between 30 minutes and two hours for Bitcoins transactions.
Features of Ripple
Type of crypto: Centralized
Is there a maximum number of XRP? No, they are created artificially
Ripple transaction time: 4 - 5 seconds
Is it safe to invest in Ripple?
In October 2o17, Ripple reached the figure of 1oo world-renowned customers, data that gives us some perspective on the real use of these technologies, their potential as a tool and their ability to reach banks and financial services entities with real applications.
Its price was affected in the December 2017 boom and after the fall, its price could remain stable at around $1-1.5 per Ripple in early 2018. If the cryptomime market continues to expand, it is very likely that the price will reach previous levels of $2 and $3. It must be taken into account that the patterns of price rises and falls do not usually accompany the rest of the crypto currencies in short-term operations.
Where can I buy Ripples?
You can buy Ripples in Kraken or CEX directly, or in exchanges like Binance, Kraken, Polionex, Bittrex, … if you want to buy it exchanging for another crypto.
Ripple’s official website: https://ripple.com/
Litecoin
Litecoin was originally created to complement Bitcoin and is another of the oldest cryptomoney projects. Litecoin, based on Bitcoin, has some important differences, especially in that the speed at which transactions are completed, which is designed to lower the cost of your mining and that the transaction costs are as low as possible. It is these three characteristics that make Litecoin’s project so interesting.
Litecoin implements Lightning Network and SegWit by default, mechanisms that make possible this agility in transaction management.
Litecoin features
Type of crypto: Decentralized
Is there a maximum number of LTCs? Yes, about 84 million. There are currently about 55 million.
Litecoin transaction time: 2 - 2.5 minutes
Is it safe to invest in Litecoin?
Litecoin’s market price increased significantly during 2017. It is one of the currencies with the highest growth capacity given its starting characteristics.
Where can I buy Litecoins?
You can buy Litecoins directly from Coinbase and Kraken among others. You can also use any exchange to buy them using other currencies.
Litecoin’s official website: https://litecoin.org/
BitcoinCash
Bitcoincash was born as a Bitcoin fork, i.e. a variation of Bitcoin, but with some significant change important enough to create a different currency. Bitcoincash incorporates a block size of 8MB, as opposed to 1MB Bitcoin, and also incorporates a mine-control algorithm that keeps the mine-difficulty rates controlled.
These new features position BitcoinCash as an intermediate cryptomode between Bitcoin and the other currencies with faster transactions.
BitcoinCash’s features
Type of crypto: Decentralized
Is there a maximum number of BCHs? Yes, the same as Bitocins 21 million. Currently, about 17 million have been created.
Time BitcoinCash transaction: 10 - 40 minutes, depending on the interest mined by the currency can make these times change
Is it safe to invest in BitcoinCash?
Since BitcoinCash came out, the great doubt about what was going to happen with this coin so similar to Bitcoin has been diluted. Currently it is a currency that is among the TOP 5 crypto currencies in terms of market capitalization. Unless there is some other Bitcoin fork in the medium term, the BitcoinCash price is likely to follow the Bitcoin trend but with a much lower reference price, since both at the mining level, as well as BitcoinCash transactions, these values are 10 times lower than in Bitcoin.
Where can I buy BitcoinCash?
You can buy BitcoinCash directly from Coinbase and Kraken among others. You can also use any exchange to buy them using other currencies.
BitcoinCash official website: https://www.bitcoincash.org/
What are the most important Altcoins projects?
Once you know which are the main projects of cryptos, you can think that they are all similar, that in the end they do not stop being coins, and that from here on everything will be the same, well, nothing further from reality.
Although the most capitalized crypto coins focus on their service as a value or as coins, you will see that there are Altcoins for all tastes, with creative applications that use blockchain technology as a proposal to solve other problems of current technology, let’s see the rest of the TOP 25 more relevant.
Cardano - ADA
Cardano emerges as a serious alternative and tries to solve the problems that Ethereum may have as a base. It has a scientific community that supports each of Cardano’s development branches. It also stands out for having a clear roadmap as far as the phases of development are concerned, very elaborated and detailed, indicating the state in which each one of them are and which will be the next milestones. Its activity and proposal focuses mainly on the development of SmartContracts.
Cardano’s features
Type of cryptomoneda: Decentralized
Is there a maximum number of Cardans? Yes, 45 billion, currently has 31 billion in circulation.
What are the main risks of investing in Cardano?
Cardano is in the TOP 5 of the list of crypto currencies, displacing Litecoin from that fifth position. Its value is low, especially due to the status of the project and the high volume of coins it has available. It is a project that can increase its value as soon as it complies with its work schedule and has real application projects, even though they indicate that it is an integral research project.
Where can I buy Cardanos?
Cardano is available to purchase the ADA/BTC or ADA/ETH pair in exchanges such as Binance, Bittrex and Upbit among others. Remember that you can buy and sell ADAs in a unitary way.
Cardano’s official website: https://www.cardanohub.org/en/home/
STELLAR - XLM
Stellar is a decentralized network that allows you to send and receive payments in any global currency. It aims to connect banks, payment gateways and people, all with almost no transaction costs and at a speed of just 2 to 5 seconds.
They are working on an exchange platform known as SDEX that brings together Stellar token exchanges, search management system for low exchange rates between two currencies and some more functionalities at the security level, ensuring a simple and secure user interface.
Features of Stellar
Type of crypto: Decentralized
Is there a maximum number of XLMs? Yes, 100 billion lumens were released, currently there are 18 billion in circulation.
What are the main risks of investing in Stellar?
Stellar promises to be the new Moneytransfer of the future. To control inflation in the price of lumens, Stellar includes a mechanism whereby they will increase the number of lumens by 1% on a fixed basis each year. Currently, Stellar’s presence in trading softwares such as Etoro makes them increase.
Stellar official website: https://www.stellar.org/lumens/